That’s one of the bigger trends GLAAD noticed in its annual “Where We Are On TV” report, which examines representation of the LGBTQ community on the small screen. The 2016 report was released this week.

“When there are so few lesbian and bisexual women on television, the decision to kill these characters in droves sends a toxic message about the worth of queer female stories,” Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD’s president and CEO, said in an introduction to annual report. “Indeed, LGBTQ characters should be treated the same as their straight, cisgender counterparts by the rules of their series’ worlds. This means having the same opportunities for romance, nuanced motivation, developed backstory, and the same odds of death. When the most repeated ending for a queer woman is violent death, producers must do better to question the reason for a character’s demise and what they are really communicating to the audience.”

The trend has not gone unnoticed in the LGBTQ community.

There’s even a hashtag for it — #DeadLesbianSyndrome.

Just this year, the death count was staggering, and often included well-loved characters. A partial list includes: Lexa on “The 100,” Mimi from “Empire,” Nora and Mary Louise on “The Vampire Diaries,” Dr. Denise from “The Walking Dead,” and Rose on “Jane the Virgin.” It’s a good thing Arizona works on “Grey’s Anatomy,” since she may need to have the medical profession on her side given the trend.

Autostraddle, a progressive feminist news website, created an infographic detailing the long history of lesbian demises on American television. Since 1976, lesbians have been getting the ax — or the arrow in the eye — at alarming rates. Of the 193 shows Autostraddle found with lesbian or bi character, 68 included dead lesbian or bi characters.

That’s a pretty alarming stat — and one that doesn’t bode well for setting good examples for LGBTQ television fans.

Lexa’s death on “The 100” was taken so hard by some fans that lists of suicide and crisis hotlines quickly made the rounds on social media sites like Tumblr in the days following the death.

Of course, not all of the GLAAD television report is all doom and gloom. There were some high points.

Those include:

• Of the 895 regular series characters counted on 118 prime time scripted shows on regular broadcast networks, 43 of those characters identify as LGBTQ. That’s up from 35 in the 2015 survey. The number of LGBTQ characters on cable shows increased to 92 from last year’s 84. On streaming series — such as shows on Hulu, Netflix and Amazon — GLAAD counted 65 regular and recurring LGBTQ characters.

• ABC has the highest percentage of LGBTQ regular series characters at 7.3 percent of all television characters on that network.

• Nearly half — 49 percent — of all LGBTQ characters on television are gay men.

• Bisexual representation increased in 2016, with 83 of the 278 total LGBTQ characters on broadcast, cable and streaming programming identifying as bi. That was a jump from last year’s 76 total bi characters on all programming platforms. The GLAAD report pointed out that of the bisexual characters, many were presented in a negative light. “The character’s identity as bisexual was directly tied to their manipulative and evil actions,” the report said, which is a troubling trend.

• There are three transgender characters on broadcast networks primetime scripted shows this year. Last year, there were none.

As Ellis noted, “Make no mistake, there has been remarkable progress made on television over the past two decades, and the advent of streaming platforms has moved us farther along the road to full inclusion. But there is still a great amount of work to be done.”

And she’s right. But first, can we stop killing off the lesbians? If that happened, I might watch a bit more TV.

Ruth Schneider resides in Eureka, is the city editor of the Times-Standard, and can be reached at 707-441-0520.